Comcast-BitTorrent pact not a substitute for net neutrality

Comcast will end its practice of "delaying" P2P uploads by year end, instead …

The cable giant and the peer-to-peer innovator whose conflict triggered a renewed debate over net neutrality have announced that they will work together now, or at least adjust some of their rhetoric. The agreement between Comcast and BitTorrent, Inc., which is designed to make sure BitTorrent traffic runs more smoothly on its network, comes in the wake of the Federal Communications Commission's investigation into Comcast's traffic management.

One of the first tangible results will be the end of Comcast's current practice of using forged TCP reset packets to hinder BitTorrent uploads by its customers. Instead, the company will use a platform-agnostic technique that may ultimately slow down P2P traffic from its heaviest users.

"This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure our network management systems, but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends," said Comcast CTO Tony Werner in a statement. "We have been discussing this migration and its effects with leaders in the Internet community for the last several months, and we will refine, adjust, and publish the technique based upon feedback and initial trial results."

Comcast has been pilloried for its traffic management practices since they became widely known last fall. The company says it has had to take steps to manage the torrents of P2P traffic flowing through its pipes in order to ensure all of its customers are able to have a good Internet experience. But the traffic management controversy has also highlighted the degree to which Comcast's network is struggling with the demands placed on it by some of its users.

Although BitTorrent has been stung by Comcast's actions in the past, it is willing to let bygones be bygones. "While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed," declared Eric Klinker, BitTorrent's CTO, "we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially." Klinker added that he is pleased that "Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent."

Friends and foes react

Obviously this news will have an impact on the debate over to what extent the FCC should establish clear net neutrality based guidelines over ISP management. The most outspoken advocates of what they call a "light regulatory touch" on the Commission have already hailed today's announcement. FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate praised the agreement. "I have consistently favored competition and market forces rather than government regulation across all platforms and especially in this dynamic, highly-technical marketplace," she declared this morning.

Ditto for her fellow Republican Robert M. McDowell. In a speech given today in California, McDowell noted that he had a set of prepared remarks on the Comcast/P2P throttling case, but had to scrap them after learning about the new deal in a call last night. To McDowell, the entire case shows that "Internet governance has been about reaching private agreement," and he said that "no further government action" would be required.

While "disclosure" of traffic throttling practices sounds good in theory, McDowell asked what would happen in we extended the same requirement to the application providers? Should P2P providers be forced to disclose how "seeding" works and that users' upstream bandwidth will be utilized to make the P2P system work? Such a rule might also arguably serve the public interest, but consumer groups aren't asking for this kind of disclosure.

Comcast's skeptics aren't convinced. Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein took a more skeptical stance, declaring that the Commission "will need to learn more details about the recent agreement between BitTorrent and Comcast, but it is encouraging that broadband providers are listening to the chorus of consumer calls for open and neutral broadband Internet access."

Free Press, not surprisingly, also has doubts. According to Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, the deal would not have happened without the threat of the FCC regulatory hammer; arguing that it's a perfect example of the free market dealing with its own problems is, in his view, ridiculous.

"This deal is the direct result of public pressure—and the threat of FCC action—against Comcast," he said. "But with Comcast's history of broken promises and record of deception—we can't just take their word that the Internet is now in safe hands. This doesn't change the urgent need for the FCC to take action."

Public Knowledge thinks the Comcast-BitTorrent announcement is "irrelevant." PK president Gigi B. Sohn argues that the FCC needs to press ahead with its investigation. "We applaud industry discussions and collaborations, but neither of these developments has any bearing on the complaint and petitions pending before the [FCC] on what rights users have on the Internet."

The Comcast/BitTorrent press release also assures the public that both parties are discussing the creation of a friendly environment for "legal" P2P use, with Werner declaring that P2P protocols have "matured as an enabler for legal content distribution." The FCC's Tate added in her press statement that she wants "all interested parties to redouble their efforts to address the growing problem of illegal content distribution, from pirated movies and music, to online child pornography, as well as the issue of child online safety." But no one so far has explained how this can be accomplished without explicit content filtering.